Which parts of this excerpt from incidents in the life of a slave girl by harriet ann jacobs best reflect the theme that slavery disrupted marriage and family structures? my lover was an intelligent and religious man. even if he could have obtained permission to marry me while i was a slave, the marriage would give him no power to protect me from my master. it would have made him miserable to witness the insults i should have been subjected to. and then, if we had children, i knew they must "follow the condition of the mother." what a terrible blight that would be on the heart of a free, intelligent father! for his sake, i felt that i ought not to link his fate with my own unhappy destiny.